MONSTROSITIES ' ' 307 



intermediate forms to link them with the preceding ones! (Italics 

 are mine.) 



Let us take for instance the case of only one character— that 

 of horns. Horned animals may have originated in the first 

 instance as a monstrosity. We find that in the Reindeer both 

 male and female are furnished with horns. In the Eland {Oreas 

 Canna) Mr. Selous says the horns of a female were longer than those 

 of a male with the longest horns/ but usually in other ruminants, 

 if horned, the female has shorter and more feeble horns. Then 

 we have species in which the female has no horns at all, and finally 

 we have a race of domestic cattle, arising suddenly as a monstro- 

 sity, in which both male and female are hornless, and so are 

 Camels, the Musk Deer, arid some others. We have no idea how 

 in these animals the suppression of horns may have come about, if 

 their ancestors ever had them. 



The appearance of new types in geological times without inter- 

 m.ediate forms must have been a very puzzling feature in the study 

 of evolution, both to Agassiz and to ordinary Darwinians. Can it 

 be possible that the sudden appearance of monstrosities, which did 

 not become extinguished by crossing with typical forms, may have 

 had something to do with these puzzling phenomena ? 



Professor Alleyne Nicholson, in the Swiney Lectures of 1893, 

 told us that both in the Old and New World, in the Old Tertiary 

 beds, a large number of quadrupeds appear all at once without any 

 predecessors, that is, ancestors from which according to the doctrine 

 of evolution these new quadrupeds could be reasonably considered 

 to be descendants. 



This is not all. For accompanying this new inroad of un- 

 accountable animals there was an inroad of plants. Between the 



1 ' The longest pair of Eland Bull horns I have seen measured 2 ft. 6 in. in length, 

 the longest pair of Cow horns 2 ft. 10 in.' — A Hunter's Wanderings in Africa, p. 206. 



